Streaming media is becoming more and more popular with consumers. At present, a variety of streaming audio, video and/or other media content is available to consumers from any number of diverse unicast and multicast sources. So-called “Internet television”, for example, is typically provided as a multicast stream using conventional Internet protocols. Media streams are also used to provide other types of network-based media content, as well as live and pre-recorded broadcast television, content-on-demand, stored media content (e.g., content stored in a remotely-located digital video recorder (DVR), placeshifted media content and the like.
Often, media content is encoded into multiple sets of “streamlets” or other smaller segment files that can be individually requested and adaptively delivered to a particular client device. As changes in network bandwidth or other factors occur, the client device is able to react to the changes by requesting future segments that are encoded with different parameters (e.g., a higher or lower bit rate). Several examples of adaptive streaming systems and techniques are described in US Patent Publication No. 2008/0195743, which is incorporated herein by reference.
While this adaptability does allow a relatively flexible form of media delivery, it can create challenges because multiple copies of each program typically need to be made available to the client at the same time. That is, the client needs to be able to switch between high-bandwidth or lower bandwidth streams on relatively short notice, so both high and low bandwidth streams need to be readily available. Often, more than two streams are provided for each program so that the client application has more options in selecting the appropriate bandwidth for the then-current conditions. Providing the multiple copies of each program stream can quickly consume available resources such as network bandwidth, encoder capabilities, storage space on a file server, and the like.
The resource consumption issue is quickly compounded in the multi-cast setting where multiple users simultaneously receive the same content, since the differently-encoded copies of the same program all need to be made available to each of the different users at the same time. It is therefore desirable to create systems and methods to reliably and conveniently manage available resources while providing multiple multicast media streams to customers. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.